First time cutting EVA Foam. A little ratty in places but overall, not to bad!
11 Likes
I’m interested in this, having two young kids who always need fancier Halloween costumes…what sort of settings/bits did you use for the EVA? Did you do all the cutouts with the XCarve, or just the engraving?
For sure, I was planning on coming back tomorrow and and adding in all of the details I could think of. I do have the Easel file, but that’s a mess right now and need to clean it up a bit before I release it to the wild.
I used the XCarve to cut make all of the cuts except for the slices on the tops of the finger guards. Then used a dremel to add weathering detail.
Looks perfect to me. Do you make props for a living?
not too bad he said 
I’m guessing you cut them flat and then folded/bent them into shape? Interested in how you did this.
Ok, so tomorrow turned into a few days. Sorry about that.
Creating the templates
I started by putting the work glove on and making templates for the cuff, top wrist guard, top hand guard and the finger links. Once I had all of the templates that I would need worked out, I taped them on a cutting matt that had an inch by inch grid. I then took a picture of the templates from the top. Opened it in Photoshop and scaled the photo until it was actual size and saved it. I then opened that photo in Illustrator so that I could trace the patterns and save them each as an svg.
Next I needed to the get really detailed bits done like they design on the forearm, and the stone holders on the top hand guard. For this I did some internet search for reference photos. Once I had the photos I needed, I scaled them to the size I needed them and traced the bits I needed from the photo in Illustrator and made SVG’s out of them.
Time for cutting
When cutting out the templates I’m not sure it really mattered what bit I used. But for the milling of the foam, the only way I could get it to work was to use the Raster Fill method, which is an Easel Pro feature. What this did for me is on every other pass the foam would get shaved off and stay together in a string, making it easy to remove.
Roughing it up
I used a Dremel and a variety of bits to rough up an and smooth out edges so that it wouldn’t look new.
Putting it together
Once everything was cut, I started putting it all together by using contact cement where there was lots of surface area that needed bonded and CA glue in those area’s that were hard to reach, mainly the fingers.
Painting
Evidently there’s some chemicals in regular spray paint that will react with foam. To fix this, I read or watched somewhere that you need to coat the foam with Plasti-Dip. So I gave the glove 3-4 coats of that. Once the glove was properly coated, I gave it 2-3 coats of Antique Gold Rustoleum. But it was a bit to bright, so I hit it with a really light coat from far away of Antique Brass. Lastly I used gold rub and buff paint to hit anywhere I thought might get rubbed over time with use to highlight wear spots.
Making the Stones
The stones were made by using plastic gems found at Hobby Lobby and using a Dremel and a sharpening stone bit to shape them to fit the stone holders I had already made. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a stone large enough for the Mind stone.
Resources
I by no means came up with this all my myself. There were many YouTube videos watched. But the main ones were.
1 Like